Sunday, September 27, 2015

Have you ever heard the phrase "an instructional manual would have been helpful"? This could or should be the words I live by. Lately I have been busy with cartooning, I have been working on some patterns for a carving friend. I even pulled out the water color pencils just cause I can. You who do your own patterns know all you need is a front and side view. Sometimes depending on the size or detail you can get away with just the side view. Here is where the rub comes in.

In cartooning it is suggested that you should show movement even with something as simple as a coffee mug. In addition a straight view, either front or a side is usually not as preferred opposed to the 3/4 view. I had the opportunity to have a person in the publishing industry view some samples of mine years ago. His response was "wrong view for the viewer and there is no movement". Yeah, you tend to remember these things. This was in the 90's and I have made some modifications since then. I also have moved on from doing mostly cartooning to doing more carving, thus you and I are both here. Let me illustrate. Even though the goose is a better angle he would be considered stiff with no movement, while the coffee mug has some movement and expression. The man on the park bench is a simple side view limiting the amount of detail in the character. Let me say this lest I forget, I have always drawn for the pleasure of drawing and none of the cartoons you see would I ever discard. I loved drawing them and I still find pleasure in them
today.

But now we stand at present day and I have to go back to the 90's and begin doing side and front view. They also need to resemble each other. This is a priority in a carving pattern. So I am an old dog once again learning new tricks. Any talents I may have I have learned by trial and error. I have no training per say so I am not as diverse as I would like to be in certain areas. None the less this is where we are and what I have on my plate, and yeah, to a certain degree I love the new challenge.